


There Are Places I Remember

by mydeira



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 15:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydeira/pseuds/mydeira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reflections on the life of the one and only Cordelia Chase.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Are Places I Remember

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pepper’s Rubber Soul ficathon (on LiveJournal). My assignment: “In My Life.” Cordelia has decided to set up residence in my head at the moment, vying for attention with the OT3. This is one piece to pacify her. Set just after “Birthday.” And thanks to Savvy, the beta I’d die without.

_All these places had their moments_   
_With lovers and friends I still can recall_

 

The biggest moments in Cordelia Chase’s life happened in the most innocuous of places.  There were four of importance:  a basement, a warehouse, a barge, and a lobby.

 

The basement belonged to Buffy Summers, resident vampire slayer on the Sunnydale hellmouth.  Cordelia had been trapped there with one Alexander Lavelle Harris; Xander to his friends.  Here they had kissed for the first time.  At the time she didn’t think it more than a stress induced moment of craziness.  More of these moments ensued.  Eventually she realized that out of all the guys she had dated, Xander was the first one she loved.

 

Her heart was broken in the warehouse, an abandoned factory where she had found her boyfriend kissing his best friend, the once mousy Willow Rosenberg.  To make matters worse, while Cordelia was trying to run as far away from the scene as possible, she fell through some rotted stairs and impaled herself on a well placed rebar.  To this day she couldn’t look at the scar without feeling a flash of the old betrayal.  She had forgotten the physical pain before the wound healed.

 

On the barge, she lost the love that might have been but gained a destiny when Francis Allen Doyle kissed her before sacrificing himself.  Her greatest regret was not realizing sooner that he cared for her.  That was when the visions weren’t splitting her skull in horrifying agony.  But in time, she accepted the visions and wouldn’t give them up for anything.  She had finally become somebody, however obscure in the eyes of the world she was.

 

And then there was the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel on the day of her twenty-first birthday.  Happy and surrounded by friends, her unwanted but accepted parting gift from Doyle changed her life forever.  It very nearly killed her.

 

 

 

_But of all these friends and lovers,_   
_There is no one compares with you_

 

Cordelia’s luck with dating was less than stellar, especially since moving to L.A.  It wasn’t every girl who woke up eight and a half months pregnant after one night of, well, okay sex.

 

Xander had been a geek, and yet it was he who had cheated on her and thus ended things, instead of the other way around.  Cosmically that sort of thing just wasn’t supposed to happen to someone like her.  It was social suicide, both while they were dating and in the aftermath of the breakup.  And yet she couldn’t regret a single moment now.

 

The Groosalug on Pylea, where she had been no less than a princess (after being a slave, but who wanted to dwell on things like that?), was one of the few winners.  A champion and hero beyond compare.  Not too bright, but oh, those muscles!  She thought of him from time to time, wondering how he was getting along ruling the land, if he had moved on.  So why had she given up being a princess again?

 

And then there was Angel.  Tall, dark, and broody.  Tell her six years ago that she would eventually be working side by side with a two hundred forty year old vampire with a soul and, quite frankly, loving every minute of it—she would have laughed in your face, if she had deigned to speak to you, that is.  And he was her best friend.  Who would have thought?  Of course, she had wanted him the moment he walked into the Bronze, but Buffy got there first.  Cordelia was glad in retrospect, because at least she didn’t have the burden of turning him evil on her shoulders.  Still, it might have been nice if he had looked at her with longing at least once, just for her ego’s sake.  But a friend, best friend, was better than nothing.

 

 

 

_And these memories lose their meaning_   
_When I think of love as something new_

 

These were the most treasured of Cordelia’s memories, the key places and players in her life.  There were other places and people that were important, too.  Thousands upon thousands of memories and feelings rolling around together to make this individual into the wholly unique Cordelia Chase.

 

Having survived the vision to end all visions, the woman that was Cordelia Chase looked into the mirror and saw herself for the first time.  So this was the woman she had become.  Remarkable.

 

She who would one day be called Jasmine smiled, and Cordelia Chase smiled back.  Yes, this would do just fine.

 


End file.
